Post by Nester the Lark on Jul 15, 2014 19:10:54 GMT -5

I'll always be a little bitter about what EA did to Origin. At first, the acquisition was actually beneficial to the Wing Commander series (my favorite) due to the higher budgets and production values. But then Chris Roberts left because he didn't like working for such a large company. Then the whole Ultima fiasco pretty much ruined Origin and led to its shutdown and Richard Garriott's departure.

And what has EA done with Ultima and Wing Commander since then? Nothing particularly good. They just flushed it all down the toilet like they do with every acquisition. Why did they even bother in the first place?

At least Chris Roberts's Star Citizen and Richard Garriott's Shroud of the Avatar will carry on the spirit.

Post by Shrikeswind on Jul 16, 2014 0:39:58 GMT -5

Honestly, even the first Sims wasn't all that great. Without the expansion packs, it was kinda boring, and with the expansion packs, you're selling your firstborn into demonic slavery just to avoid playing an obsolete game.

I would not say that EA is evil, mind you. It's a company run by people who are just trying to make money in the video game industry, same as Nintendo. What's wrong with EA is that it does everything horribly wrong in development. Many of their games are released with poor polish and little quality control, the few which aren't have very limited amounts of improvement between them, because at the end of the day, EA is a company which wants to be the best, but doesn't want to put in the effort to be much better than middle of the pack at best. It doesn't want to innovate or improve on itself, it just wants to maintain status quo in an industry which is whizzing past it like hedgehogs racing turtles.

Post by kirbychu on Jul 16, 2014 6:02:20 GMT -5

Sims 3 suffered from not having Maxis working on it originally, but they became involved recently and it's been getting better since. It was still a fun game when it wasn't freezing or corrupting your saves. It had good concepts, I think EA just weren't putting enough money into QA. They seem to be trying more now, though.

Post by michaelivan on Jul 17, 2014 0:56:11 GMT -5

EA doesn't grant enough time for creativity or refinement. That's where their "unpolished" reputation comes from. If a game is mostly done but not quite great before a deadline, oh well! Stick it on a disk and sell it anyways. Great companies like Maxis and BioWare suffer because of that. Nintendo, in contrast, seems more relaxed about giving time for a game's completion. EA's rush for more sequels isn't helpful in terms of quality, either.